


Euphoric Dreams

by KingpinCobblepot (Theonlylucysaxon)



Series: Not Everyone Has a Cobblepot [2]
Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Gen, No real ship content, companion piece to another fic, likely will make no sense out of that context
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-09-29
Packaged: 2019-07-20 10:12:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16135112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theonlylucysaxon/pseuds/KingpinCobblepot
Summary: This is a companion one shot to my much larger AU fic Life Only Gives You One. It is written to coincide with the completion of chapter six-- in which Ed takes care of Dougherty finally. This fic illustrates some very VERY graphic bloody fantasies Edward still dreams about after the murder because even in killing Tom, he didn't let himself do all the things he wanted to do. Very graphic gore, very little plot contribution.Partly posting as a gift to someone who wanted to see the true depth of this scene in a more uncut form.





	Euphoric Dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [horrorriz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/horrorriz/gifts).



> I had wanted this degree of madness incorporated into the main fic, but shyed away to try and avoid potential triggers, to keep true to my canon plot followings, and to keep my mature rating. This is rated explicit because it is as explicitly graphic about the violence and the dark parts of Ed that have been realized as I could be. 
> 
> That being said? Enjoy, my lovelies as always. <3

In his dreams, he does it. He’s fearless. Edward stoops to his knees on the ground and begins to peel Tom’s clothes back so he can get to his bare skin. He knows from later mutilations done to the corpse, exactly where each stab wound was. As the blood had later dried around them and onto the fabric of the shirt-- now it would still be wet. Warm. Seeping out of Dougherty and Edward can feel it spread over his fingers with each button he undoes. The cool breeze of the night just gently brushes over Ed’s face, and it feels so real. All of it around him. Springing to life in vivid detail all around him. The memory of it all engulfs Edward and offers to him not solace in the evenings… No, solace is a warm comfort. This memory isn’t giving him comfort. It’s giving him that sweet familiar high.

It doesn’t offer solace.

It offers euphoria. 

He can feel his hand gripping the blade with renewed sort of passion, a depth of understanding few might ever feel for anything. But not Ed. This moment of fantasy replays so often that he can all but feel the twitch of his fingers as he drives the knife down hard into Tom’s chest. 

The blood is all so fresh. So warm. It spills from his chest in a way the cadavers never did on his slab. It’s so real. So red. So… incredible. He watches the way it pools under his incision. Stemming to the surface of the skin and running droplets over as he draws his weapon downward. Soon it’s gushing. Covering everything, and leaving the sight all but unrecognizable as human. It looks like some poor slaughtered animal. 

Something killed and being let before the butcher draws it apart for rations. Human flesh, what had once been a person is indistinguishable from any other creature when bloodied and carved. Edward smirks at the notion. It’s all the same in the end. There is some kind of vague, incomprehensible beauty in such an idea. In these dreams, though, he rarely looks for such poetry. 

No, in these dreams he fulfills his well guarded desire. 

The desires he tries best not to think about under the harsh light of day or the scrutiny of what he loosely defines as his justification for doing as he did that night with Dougherty. He wasn’t a bad man. He wasn’t insane. He was protecting Oswald and any side effects-- any outside stimuli about the act which gave him any sense of pleasure was inconsequential. It had been about being a hero. It had been about doing what was right. 

In his subconscious, he cannot hide behind these white lies and simple answers. 

In the depths of his mind, the true corners he likes to pretend don’t exist because of how uncomfortable they make him, he knows the truth. He embraces the truth. He revels in imagining exactly what he would have done in that moment if allowed. 

After a nice long moment of admiring the way Tom looked-- all bloodied and split open, Ed would proceed to do what he wanted. His hand delving into the open cavity and feeling the rush around him of a still almost alive man. A man so fresh to the moment of death that perhaps even his veins and arteries were still fluttering inside him, so fresh his neurons still fired signals of distress and panic-- his yet to begin decaying cortexes trying to decipher what this was… Trying to fight the inevitable. Ed feels the inside of his chest cavity as if he is caressing his way inside. He’s gentle. He needs to be delicate to get what he wants. And soon enough his fingers find just the thing. 

The heart. 

Ed pushes back the skin, looking down into his chest where his hand grips the organ. In his dreams, he does what he wonders is possible in reality-- but something he never questions, No. It would ruin everything if he began to question any of the tentative world he creates in these moments of self indulgence when he fantasizes about ripping it right from his chest. Like an apple picked from a tree. He can feel it in his hands. Still warm, coating his fingers in fresh blood that only mingles with what was already there. He’d roll it over gently-- he’d look at it wistfully. Turning it over to just stare at it. 

Fascinating. 

In his dreams, he laughs. A full, sincere, maddened laugh. A laugh of such joy as Ed isn’t sure he’s every truly felt before in reality. Aside from that night in the street. It’s a secret joy that he isn’t sure he’ll ever be able to share with anyone. He isn’t sure anyone could ever understand-- just what it felt like to kill him. Just what drove him to want that feeling of his heart resting lifelessly in his hand. He had done it was the thing… Something no one could ever know. Something he wanted to tell EVERYONE. He had done this. Killed him. Ended his life. Stopped this heart in his hand now. 

No one can ever know, and yet it’s the most present moment Ed feels he’s ever experienced. Never has he been so connected to his body and his mind and who he is then when he was shoving that knife again and again into the officer. Hearing that noise. Feeling the pressure needed to penetrate his skin and clothes and flesh. Seeing the light leave Tom’s eyes-- oh what a vulgar, disgusting light it had been. Full of a need to hurt others, to be superior even though he _ wasn’t.  _ He didn’t deserve to have any of that light. Edward knew it, and so did other people surely. Others he might have hurt like Oswald. Others who saw the way he treated people and let him get away with it. Other people could have seen it and they did nothing.  Edward was better than them. The whole lot. The whole city even. 

He made the decision of what Tom no longer deserved, and with his decision came an end to Dougherty. There was an emptiness in doing as he had. A certain kind of void that lay at his feet, revealing just how meaningless it could all be. Life. Happiness. Love. It all lay in the broken fragments of Dougherty’s feet and Edward got to decide that he deserved none of it anymore. Edward Nygma was his judge, his jury, his executioner. The power coursed through Ed’s body when he remembered that feeling. When he imagined how much sweeter-- how much more intense it might have been if he had been allowed to gut the man there in the street like he wanted…

In the daytime, he’d never admit it. In the harsh light of morning, his subconscious buried away the thoughts as unpleasant nightmares. Memories haunting a guilty conscience. He could never admit to anyone, not even himself what the dreams really are. The joy the bring. The wishes they fulfill. No. He hides those truths behind the oh so dark depths of his eyes, and instead forces some part of him to insist he only did it for Oswald. 

He only did it to save him. 

To protect him. 

To ensure they could be together. 

That reason-- it makes it all okay. It makes it something he can reconcile with. It something to cling to, and something which keeps Ed from truly falling into his own madness. 

For now, at least. 


End file.
